Thanks for starting this discussion. From my experience, the development partners continue to use long-term impact indicators that are unlikely to be attained after the project's life and are used to inform decisions. The challenge is of course the true impact takes time, the interventions may provide building blocks on which the impact will be realized at some future date. We cannot model shocks that tend to affect long-term indicators. as you have correctly identified, the methods and data to credibly measure this are expensive. Many partners are clearly not willing to meet the costs. The fallback is less credible evaluations that are mainly undertaken in a BAU (business as usual) model to tickmark processes.
A key thing that works especially if you track people for a long time is to share both data and knowledge. Our Institution share data in an effort to enhance learning over time, especially as key indicators such as knowledge acquisition and behaviour change cannot be observed in the short term.
RE: A lack of learning in the monitoring and evaluation of agriculture projects
Dear Daniel,
Thanks for starting this discussion. From my experience, the development partners continue to use long-term impact indicators that are unlikely to be attained after the project's life and are used to inform decisions. The challenge is of course the true impact takes time, the interventions may provide building blocks on which the impact will be realized at some future date. We cannot model shocks that tend to affect long-term indicators. as you have correctly identified, the methods and data to credibly measure this are expensive. Many partners are clearly not willing to meet the costs. The fallback is less credible evaluations that are mainly undertaken in a BAU (business as usual) model to tickmark processes.
A key thing that works especially if you track people for a long time is to share both data and knowledge. Our Institution share data in an effort to enhance learning over time, especially as key indicators such as knowledge acquisition and behaviour change cannot be observed in the short term.